Quote from: RPGPundit;1050116Well, I guess the notion of a maximum tends from my experience that past a certain size, rulebooks tend to have a rapidly increasing percentage chance of being bad. Because if you're at 500 pages, odds are that a really big chunk of that is endless lists of spells, feats, or skills.

I can understand a maximum size, and realise that my willingness to accept large volumes is far from universal.

Minimum is weird though, as it is tied very strongly to price. I'd accept a much smaller offering for 10c than I would at $10.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1049770This is a weird question. I have no idea what the maximum is. If you can keep adding useful information keep making it bigger.

From personal experience, the 1000+ page SWN Omnibus is VERY impractical to have at the table.
I got it as much as it seemed like a fun idea and looks cool on my shelf as anything else.
Still, I DO use it as a reference material outside of a gaming night.
But really, it's better to be broken up into separate books.

I think personally, the original Pathfinder core rules book (500-ish pages?) is about as much pages as I'd want in one book, after that it's just too much.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1050211From personal experience, the 1000+ page SWN Omnibus is VERY impractical to have at the table.
I got it as much as it seemed like a fun idea and looks cool on my shelf as anything else.
Still, I DO use it as a reference material outside of a gaming night.
But really, it's better to be broken up into separate books.

I think personally, the original Pathfinder core rules book (500-ish pages?) is about as much pages as I'd want in one book, after that it's just too much.

There's certainly a point where I'd prefer to see a giant volume split into multiple physical items. But, for the purposes of "what size rulebook is acceptable," I would consider (for example) GURPS 4E to be the size of Vol 1 + Vol 2. Similarly, Rolemaster is Spell Law + Arms and Claw Law + Character and Campaign Law, and 1E AD&D is PHB + DMG. These are all minimum requirements for a complete game, and coming in multiple books or booklets doesn't alter that fact.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1050236and coming in multiple books or booklets doesn't alter that fact.

Actually it does if those volumes are intelligently divided. For games that divide player stuff from GM stuff, then players only need one book. In the case of AD&D that was one 128 page book vs everybody having to buy the combined 474 of the PH+DMG+MM.

Even if you want to own all three, by spliting them, you don't have to lug all three around with you when you just need the stuff that is in one of them.

So yes multiple smaller books vs one giant tome, does make a difference.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1050239Actually it does if those volumes are intelligently divided. For games that divide player stuff from GM stuff, then players only need one book. In the case of AD&D that was one 128 page book vs everybody having to buy the combined 474 of the PH+DMG+MM.

Even if you want to own all three, by spliting them, you don't have to lug all three around with you when you just need the stuff that is in one of them.

So yes multiple smaller books vs one giant tome, does make a difference.

Let me rephrase.

Yes, the number of volumes creates real, practical differences. I even have preferences based on those differences. I would have preferred GURPS 4E to be a single volume rather than two. I prefer the RM2/RMSS three-volume system to the modular, small pamphlet version of RM1 or the five-volume version in RMFRP. I don't see any benefit in folding the 1E PHB into the 1E DMG, but I do think the Rules Cylopedia is a more useful reference than the BECMI boxed sets.

However ...

I have never made a decision to purchase or not purchase a game based on the publisher's decision about how many volumes to break the core rules into. Ergo, for the purposes of this thread, the number of volumes doesn't have any practical, real-world effect on my answer to the question "largest main rulebook I'd buy".

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1050236............... These are all minimum requirements for a complete game, and coming in multiple books or booklets doesn't alter that fact.

I was answering the question more literally.. meaning literally 1 physical book.

But yeah, I like that for example Rolemaster split books up into Spell law, Arms law, etc etc...

Quote from: danskmacabre;1050241I was answering the question more literally.. meaning literally 1 physical book.

But yeah, I like that for example Rolemaster split books up into Spell law, Arms law, etc etc...

I was as well, and while it may seem trivial, I have passed on games due to their physical layout. These days giant tomes turn me off. The other side of that is games that look to be splat book heavy do as well, so putting your games 800 pages into 12 thin books is not likely to win me over either.

min 40
max 300

Obviously, regardless of pagecount, you can certainly say that the minimum needed is 1 book, and in my experience in a lot of cases having a single complete book is in some ways better than having a whole bunch of books, for certain games.